After several controversial refereeing decisions in recent weeks which, in my opinion, are ruining the game, I have been giving a lot of thought to how things can be improved because I know that FIFA, UEFA and FA Officials regularly read this blog… ahem… well, you never know… I can but sow the odd seed here and there and hope that some might land on fertile soil here and there.

As stated in a previous post, I am fully in favour of referees being able to call on TV replays when there is an element of doubt regarding a major decision.

Things which come immediately to mind are:-

• Penalty decisions, particularly when it is not clear whether the attacker has dived or that the defender did indeed win the ball.
• Goal-line decisions… did the ball cross the line or not?
• Offside decisions.

There have been some monumental gaffes by referees and their assistants with decisions relating to these areas over the years but the fact that I can name at least one within the last 48 hours and several within the last couple of weeks show that these are not isolated and rare occurrences, they are happening week in and week out.

Before I go on, I think I must state that it is my belief that whilst the referee and his assistants are part of the game, they are part of the game in as much as the rules are part of the game. They are rule books on legs if you like.

How they enforce these rules should always be under review and any technology or ideas to improve on the current situation should always be given the fullest consideration, even if not actually implemented.

Unfortunately, Sepp Blatter, President of FIFA and therefore the most powerful man in football does not agree with this.

I started to do a bit of research into Blatter’s position and, quite frankly, I was a bit horrified.

As far back as 2002, Blatter said this,

“As long as I am president of FIFA, I am totally opposed to artificial help for referees in FIFA-controlled matches. Any idea of television replays to sort out offside decisions or the like would take away the spontaneity of the game and destroy the human touch, which makes the game more popular. The human touch is what is important, and while the matches are under the control of humans and not electronics, mistakes will be made, but we must work hard to diminish them.”

Before I go any further, I feel I must comment on this.

Firstly, the “totally opposed” part suggests a man who has made his stance quite clear and will not be budged from it, ever, under any circumstances.

Principles are a good thing in a man and I usually admire them but pig-headedness is not usually a good trait, especially in such a high-powered person.

Using TV replays will not remove the human touch. The rules of the game are not “human”. They are words written on a piece of paper and in most cases, they are quite clear. Anyone who loves the game of football should be jumping through hoops to ensure that the rules of the game are followed as closely as possible.

If a player takes a player’s leg away in the penalty area, it is a penalty because the rules state that it is a penalty, not because the referee believes that it is a penalty.

If a player is offside, it is because, according to the rules, he is offside, not because the assistant referee holds up his flag.

If a ball crosses the line, it is a goal and not because the referee decides to give it.

The human touch will never be removed from football because the players and managers are human.

Players make human decisions every second they are on the pitch, some of them are good decisions and some of them are bad decisions but they are always human decisions.

Managers make decisions before the game has even started and usually make further decisions during the course of the game (substitutions etc). Again, human decisions.

And let us not forget the fans. They are (mostly) human too.

This is where football gets its human element from. We don’t need referees to add any further human element to the mix.

Some of the best football matches I have ever watched are those where you hardly even notice that the referee is there.

Reading between the lines of Blatter’s comments, it almost seems that in a sadistic sort of way, he actually enjoys it when a gross injustice is committed as a result of a bad refereeing decision – that whilst the players, managers and fans of the victimised club are tearing their hair out in frustration, this is actually a great thing for the game.

To end the statement with “But we must work hard to diminish them” just makes me ask… how has all the “hard work” of the last seven years dimished them? Mistakes… BIG mistakes are still being made by referees every week.

Why not just concede that in certain circumstances, TV replays will not only diminish those mistakes but remove some of them completely overnight and it needn’t be hard work, either?

Speaking in 2006, Blatter made the following statement:

“As long I am president, it will only be goal-line technology. Until I am no longer president, there will be no chance for video replays“.

A slight softening of the position as this was around the time when the Hawk-Eye technology was being investigated.

It is beyond the scope of this article to go into what happened with the Hawk-Eye technology for goal-line incidents (suffice it to say that despite the boffins behind Hawk-Eye delivering a solution, it was never actually implemented).

We still have the same stance regarding general video replays being used to assist referees to give an informed decision on other incidents.

In 2007 we had Michel Platini adding his views to the argument and (unsurprisingly), he is of the same opinion as Blatter:

“Video referees would destroy football. If we had this, in 10 years’ time, we would no longer have any referees, refereeing would be over forever and we would have to use a video. Video is a big problem for me. You would have to stop the game every 10 seconds, for every decision that is questioned. Football is a human game and the mistakes are human. We need to help solve the mistakes, but we must not lose the human feeling of our sport.”

You might just want to re-read that statement and ask yourself if Platini is actually in touch with reality. He is taking everything to the most extreme level.

Phrases such as “Destroy football”, “Refereeing would be over forever”, “Stop the game every ten seconds” are clearly not based on the reality of the situation.

Advocates of video evidence are not looking for referees to be removed from the game, merely assisted to do their job. No one would want the game to be stopped “every ten seconds” for every single incident to be analysed.

I would suggest that in any one game of football, there are generally perhaps just three or four major incidents that warrant the use of TV replays.

As far as “destroying football” is concerned, the ill-feeling and disillusionment felt by everyone concerned when a blatant injustice has been committed against them with seemingly no recourse for a reversal of the decision available to them will destroy the game before video evidence ever will.

The worst thing about all of this is that the powers-that-be seem to be so stubbornly against the proposals and will not even entertain any kind of trial period.

Sepp Blatter has had several weird and wonderful ideas over the years that have tackled issues far less important in the overall scheme of things (Golden Goal, Silver Goal, removal of shirt during goal celebration to be punished with a yellow card etc) and these have all been trialled (fully implemented in the case of the latter example and dropped completely in the case of the former two).

Surely it is now time for Blatter to admit that perhaps he was wrong when he first made those comments regarding video evidence and it is worth trialling.

I think most fans/managers/players would welcome a trial and at the end of the day, these are the most important people in football. Blatter might disagree but remove those people from the game and Blatter would just be the irrelevant head of an irrelevant organisation.

When a player cheats and gets away with it, football as a whole is cheated.

When a referee gets a decision wrong that could so easily be put right, the repercussions of that decision can reach far beyond that particular moment.

When a player makes a good run but is wrongly ruled offside, it deprives everyone of a potentially historic footballing moment.

When players train and dedicate their lives to being at the peak of their ability at any given time and when managers ensure that everything is A1 for their players from the food they eat to the intricacies of the tactics that they wish their players to employ during a game only for it all to be rendered pointless by a bad refereeing decision is absolutely criminal… especially when a thirty second glance at a tv screen is all that it takes to remedy the majority of controversial decisions.

When the man at the head of the most important body in world football uses words like “never” to a reasonable and warranted footballing proposal that could improve the game beyond measure overnight without even giving it a small trial, you have to wonder if such a man is the right man for such a dynamic and forward-thinking role or is he a dinosaur stuck in the past?

I know where I stand on the issue and whilst this is probably age-ist, at almost 74 years of age, I think it’s time he stepped down and let someone younger (but please not Michel Platini!!!) take up the role so that we might re-open the discussions for tv replays again.